I’m a daughter of a rural indigenous woman, she has a lot to do with what I do and who I am. She’s a woman who has a lot of spiritual power and a lot of power that’s come from the land. She has a lot of strength, a lot of wisdom. I haven’t met a wiser woman than my mother.
The situation here for women is not good. It’s brutal violence. It’s just brutal. There is lot of sexual violence and femicides. You see everything.
One of the first actions carried out against women by an armed actor, or a husband, or society, is the rape of women. It is a way to silence them. It is a way to break them. I have been raped twice.
Within these patriarchal and misogynistic structures, we also see the impact on the Amazon, concentration of land and livestock. The man goes out with his machete or with his chainsaw to cut down the forests. They use the same tools to threaten the women when they object to the cutting down of the forest.
So, first what we do for the abused women is to hold them up, to strengthen them, to accompany them, to hug them. Then we make that connection between the women and the Amazon. The Amazon has been deforested, it’s been burned and abused just like the women. So, we need to heal the women. We need to heal the land; we need to heal the Amazon.
I’m a territorial peace counsellor. I sit down at a round table with the ranchers and the civil society that I represent. After all this time, I sit down, and I can tell them face-to-face what I see and think.
The peace agreement is marvellous, but the problem is that the state is not implementing it. It’s not fulfilling the agreement. They didn’t make roads or develop education or healthcare or guarantee farmer’s rights. They allowed a vacuum.
The poor are being recruited – the sons of the poorest rural women in our country – by all the armed actors, fighting for control of the resources.
We are alone as women. We need more power. I look at my daughter and my fight is for her.